This invention is concerned with a process and related apparatus whereby aquatic plants may be planted underwater for purposes of restoration. The restoration of all aspects of the environment has become extremely important in recent years. The three areas of restoration which are of primary importance are reducing air pollution, restoring and cleaning up the land and cleaning up and restoring our waterways, the oceans and related estuaries. It is these related estuaries that are the primary thrust of the subject invention.
As a result of the decrease in water quality millions of acres of aquatic plant life, which form an important part of the aquatic eco system have been destroyed. That is because of a decrease in water quality, in other words pollution, aquatic plant life has been destroyed. In most cases this destruction has been gradual over a long period of years however in some instances it can be rapid for example as the result of a ship wreck or grounding.
Because aquatic plant life is an important part of the complex aquatic environment the restoration of this plant life is of primary importance.
The natural restoration of aquatic plant life is an extremely slow process. While it is possible to manually plant shoots of aquatic plants and seeds of aquatic plants, due to the cost of labor, the manual planting of sea grass plants and seeds is at best been marginally successful. Due to the difficulty of manually planting shoots and seeds of aquatic plants the cost of manually planting just one acre of an estuary can be many tens of thousands of dollars. Further manual planting, in some instances is of questionable success as the person doing the planting in walking over the bottom of an estuary does further damage by crushing other plants which may be growing in the area.
This invention is concerned with a process and apparatus whereby sea grass can be quickly planted in an economical fashion.
As used in connection with this invention the term aquatic plant life and sea grass and seeds therefore, includes many species of plant life such as halodule, wrightii (shoal grass), thalassia (turtle grass) etc.
Aquatic plant life as it exists in estuaries is important in preventing water pollution as this plant life acts as a filter for many pollutants and hence this plant life helps to maintain water quality.
The restoration of aquatic life to the bottom of our estuaries is extremely important as this aquatic plant life plays a critical function in the total marine eco system. A large number of important marine animals, both warm and cold blooded, rely totally or in part on this aquatic plant life for a breeding area, for cover, for food etc. for example the endangered manatee relies solely on sea grass as its food source.